Disco Sport could be most popular Land Rover

Land Rover's new Discovery Sport is selling up a storm even before it's officially released in Australia on May 1.

The company already holds 400 orders for the Freelander 2 replacement and Land Rover Australia managing director Matthew Wiesner expects that number to swell to more than 600 by next month.

Wiesner remains coy about exact sales forecasts, but motoring.com.au understands the Disco Sport is expected to attract in excess of 200 sales a month, which equates to more than 2400 annual sales.

Last year the Discovery 4 was Land Rover's top-selling model in Australia, with 2701 sales, followed closely by the Range Rover Evoque (2584) and Range Rover Sport (2576).

The larger Discovery 4 is now in its 10th year and a replacement is at least two years away, but Wiesner admits some Disco Sport sales will come at the expense of the Evoque, which sells in the same mid-size luxury SUV segment.

Land Rover says the family-oriented Discovery Sport will attract different buyers to the designed-focussed Evoque, which is priced from $49,995 in 2WD form and also available as a three-door.

Built in the same Halewood factory, based on the same platform and powered by the same engines, the larger Disco Sport five-door starts at $53,300 but comes standard with AWD and is available with seven seats.

"[Evoque sales cannibalisation by Discovery Sport] is the subject of plenty of internal debate at the moment," said Wiesner at this week's media launch in Canberra.

"We're going to watch that closely. Some people will come in for an Evoque and go away with a Discovery Sport and vice-versa.

"Will it outsell Evoque? It'll be up there. We'll have to wait and see."

Wiesner said the Discovery Sport had affected sales of the Discovery, sales of which were nonetheless up 24 per cent up last year, but would not continue to do so.

"We saw a little bit of hesitation for Discovery when the Sport first appeared... but once people understood its [smaller] size sales started flying again. Last month was our biggest month [of Discovery sales] in over five years."

Wiesner said the Disco Sport will build on the success of the model it replaces, the Freelander 2, which last year found 1156 Aussie homes – far less than segments leaders like the Audi Q5 (3432) and BMW X3 (2842).

“Freelander [2] was a very good, honest interpretation of the compact SUV for us, [but] the Discovery Sport takes us into a whole new space where premium compact SUVs have been dominated by our German friends and finally we’ve got the right offering,” Wiesner said.

"Evoque's been strong at about 2500 sales a year and Freelander did about 1100 sales last year, but Discovery Sport will be a hell of a lot stronger than Freelander."

Wiesner said that, together, Evoque and Discovery Sport will generate more sales in the medium SUV segment than ever for Land Rover.

“With Evoque at one end and Discovery Sport at the other, we can neatly bookend the segment. When you look at what we are hoping to do between both products through the year, the amount of customer interest we are going to create in the compact SUV segment for Land Rover full stop between Evoque and Discovery Sport will be significant.”

As we've reported, Land Rover believes the Disco Sport will sway buyers from luxury SUVs like the Q5, X3 and Volvo XC60, as well as premium versions of mid-size and large SUVs from mainstream brands such as Toyota, Mazda and Hyundai.

“Our core competitor set for the Discovery Sport will be the Q5, X3, Volvo XC60… but we’ve certainly discussed internally that given that Land Rover is a strong aspirational SUV brand, if you look at where the Japanese and Koreans are creeping up into that space, the Discovery Sport role is far greater than just targeting the Europeans.

“We have a great opportunity to start to draw others from some of the Asian brands. If you look at some of the higher-spec versions of your Pathfinders, your Santa Fes and the like… they’re seven-seaters, and they’re creeping up into our [price] space. "It's a great opportunity to draw buyers from some Asian brands," said Wiesner.

So far 92 per cent of pre-orders have been for the diesel variants, with more than 40 per cent optioning up the seven-seat configuration.

The Discovery Sport is certain to bring a new sales record this year for Land Rover, which broke the 10,000 sales mark in 2014.

"We will sell more cars this year," said Wiesner. "We sold 10,000 cars last year for the first time and we'll improve on that. What you'll see is Discovery Sport add to our growth in 2015, but I'm mindful of not overdialling sales due to production limits."

For now, Land Rover Australia has ruled out introducing the front-drive eD4 version of the Discovery Sport to be released in Europe later this year, because 2WDs represent less than one per cent of Evoque sales and "Land Rover's got to be four-wheel drive", said Wiesner.